Australia

'Australia's largest wind farm' wins state approval

AUSTRALIA: New South Wales' minister for planning has approved a proposal for a 267-turbine wind farm that is set to be the country's largest.

AGL Energy’s 420MW Macarthur project in Victoria is currently the largest in the country (pic: Vestas)

Developer Epuron's Liverpool Range project, situated between the townships of Coolah and Cassilis, about 360 kilometres north-west of Sydney, would have a capacity of up-to-960MW. This implies turbines with a power rating of about 3.5MW.

It would be connected into the Wellington-Wollar 330kV power network 30 kilometres south via an overhead transmission line.

The project still needs federal government approval "due to the potential impacts on threatened species and communities", the assessment report stated.

Liverpool Range was initially planned to have 288 turbines, but this number was reduced to 267 during the assessment process, the approval document states. Turbines would be limited to tip heights of 165 metres and hub heights of 100 metres.

When built, Liverpool Range could be the largest wind farm in Australia. Utility AGL Energy’s 420MW Macarthur project in Victoria is currently the largest in the country.

The Coolah-Cassilis area is generally used for farming and grazing, Epuron stated. Mining leases and permits cover much of the site area, although the only large-scale operations to date are around the town of Ulan to the south.

Epuron has developed wind and solar projects across five Australian states.

To date, it has developed two operational wind farms — the 165.5MW Gullen Range and 30MW Cullerin Range sites, both in New South Wales — but sold them to Goldwind in 2011 and Origin Energy in 2008 respectively. It has six more wind projects in various stages of development.